Showdown 7: Challenges

This is part seven of a series exploring factors in self-employment and traditional employment. For more about this series, read the opening article.

Challenges

How difficult your work is and your influence over it

Self

Boss

Pros

Cons

Pros

Cons

You choose your work, so you can choose the challenges you wish to take

Self-employment is a challenge itself

As with the independence showdown, you have the ability to try new things and push the limits

You may not have external factors to keep challenging you

It’s easy to go the easy route – keeping motivated to push yourself can be tiring

Motivation can come from the outside and have more immediate payoffs

If you’re not being challenged by your employer, you may have little recourse other than to change jobs

Conclusions

I consider “challenging” to be a good thing. Entrepreneurs have to be open to new challenges and difficult work – that’s a lot of what self-employment involves. A regular job can also provide challenges, but if your particular situation doesn’t lend itself to that, you will find yourself frustrated and bored. And as any 1st grade teacher can tell you, bored kids are not happy, productive kids.